Day two

...more early sketches and diving into thumbnails

Hello! Today I want to talk a bit more about the early development stage, as that can be the hardest part of a book.

As with Santa, I also began thinking about the family, and what they would look like, and I began sketching them out, roughly, drawing out my first ideas of how I might illustrate the text. As you can see, I began by thinking more in small individual spot images, and I was yet to visualise a whole spread. As I said yesterday, I just let my mind roam free and draw whatever came to mind. I find this such a helpful way to work and I have started every project I’ve done this way now, I find it the best way to let go of worries about how to start.

more sketches, to help kick start the project

The reindeer…! Ahh, the reindeer! I think they need a whole post dedicated to them, but this is my very first attempt at sketching them. I decided to not look at any reference, as I wanted them to feel as natural to me as possible! I kind of liked how quirky they were in this sketch, but when I painted them up, they looked like flying camels!! I’ll write more about that in another post!

I often start projects with very rough, almost incoherent thumbnails, and this was no exception. I began with a set of these very loose thumbnails. I think it’s just a way of getting my very first visual thoughts down, so they’re not floating around my head.

I always like to think about where the text goes in my thumbnails. Perhaps it is from my days as a designer and art director.

I remember feeling quite freaked out by the idea of moving onto more fully formed thumbnails, but at this early stage, I tried to keep an open mind, keep going and not to judge too much. By combining this stage with the sketches you have seen, they began to take shape.

It’s interesting to see how much some of them stayed pretty similar to these tiny thumbnails. These would have been about 5 x 10 cm - big enough to sketch in some detail, but not big enough to get lost in too much big, empty space.

For me, this stage is about getting all the initial thoughts onto the page, and it can be hard because there is always a big side of me that lacks confidence in my ability to be creative. I think it’s like I said yesterday, there’s something about making imaginative drawings, as opposed to drawings made on location, that feels like I have to conjure something out of thin air. But I forget that I have a bank of knowledge that I have built up - how to draw people and places, tone and colour - that I have learned from all my observational drawing, and if I trust myself to make the drawings, that bank of knowledge is there. In The Artists Way, Julia Cameron says “you take care of the quantity and God will take care of the quality.” She wants you to interpret “God” in the way that is most helpful to you (not necessarily religiously). I always read it as an ephemeral and free-floating creative energy, that sometimes I have generated, other times, it feels like I just need to trust that it is there. I also often think of the line “build it and they will come” from Field of Dreams. I honestly don’t think I can even remember the plot, but for me, it conjures up the same idea of self-trust.

I’ll leave it there for now. It’s been really interesting to look through the early stages of this project. I saved my work on this project in dated folders, so it’s quite easy for me to see my progress through it all. It’s a really interesting way to work, as I can look back through each day/week month that and see how I worked at each stage. Hopefully, it will mean I can take you through the project in a logical way, although, if you know me by now at all, you’ll know we will encounter some chaos at some point! You can look forward to that!

Until tomorrow!

Ella xx